I grabbed half of the first squad, and we headed up to the second floor. I wasn’t where this constant bravery came from, but I was going to blame the system. We started looking in rooms, and many of them were empty of people. All the beds and medical equipment were still there. Halfway through searching the second floor we found living patients still in beds. They looked sedated or sleeping, but the charts didn’t indicate coma. Maybe this Tim person isn’t killing people. The person in the bed didn’t look sick at all. They were certainly old, over 70 according to their chart, but they did not look like they were on death’s door. The vitals on the machines looked better than what was on the chart. I had never been able to understand a chart before, so this was definitely a new phenomenon. However, I was no doctor, so I called up Jack from the first floor.

  When Jack arrived, he started looking at the charts. He would then look at the monitors the person was hooked up to. He did this several times while saying “hmm” a lot. He finally looked at me and said, “These numbers on the monitor are pretty healthy numbers. There looks like there is a sedative in the drip, but that is probably the only thing keeping this person asleep right now. I think that one of the nurses healed this person from their coma, and the underlying condition. Though, they have a type of heart disease. I still have no clue how the person healed them, but it is beyond the simple tier 1 healing I can do. I would be super interested in knowing what tier their ability is.” He looked amazed. We just stood there for a minute or two soaking in the weight of what he said. Tim might have a Tier 2, 3, or higher ability. That probably puts his class in the rare category.

  I looked back at Jack one last time, “Well I hope this guy didn’t actually go and kill 200 plus residents, because as much as I want someone with his ability, I would have a hell of a hard time justifying it to just about anybody.”

  “We could have him executed and then steal the ability.” Jack replied.

  “I would, but no most people don’t have the casting level. Unfortunately, to copy higher tier abilities requires more caster level. We’re at this weird catch-22. We could have someone steal his ability, but people will need higher wisdom or intelligence to cast it, and almost nobody has the mana to use it outside of free uses a day as a class ability. This will resolve as soon as people can get their caster level and mana up. My fear is that we don’t have the kind of time it will take.”

  Clint popped his head in the room, “Whatcha gentlemen discussing?”

  “Oh, just about how prosecuting someone with a specific societally essential ability is more difficult now.”

  “That sounds a bit deep for our purposes. However, We need to go up to the next floor at least. There are dozen people here that are sedated with feeding tubes. There are 70 empty beds. Not sure if that means, he has killed 70 people. We know the lupin killed several. Oh, and we need to get me to the roof, there is a smaller cell tower up top that I can fortify.”

  “Good point on both counts. I thought you were using your ability in Fenton mostly.”

  “I was, but there are 4 other guys now in Fenton with the cell tower technician class. One of them has a 7 intelligence, so in a few days they have gotten a lot of Fenton. Hell, that guy started on Saturday morning as soon as he got his ability. He has covered 28 towers as of today. I figured we don’t need every tower outside Fenton, but we do need several. We do want to ensure the national networks still connects to our infrastructure.”

  “Yeah, I hadn’t really thought that one all the through. Good idea though. I imagine Oakland, Crestwood, and parts of Sunset hills will become evacuation routes for many downtown residents. We will already be evacuated, so easier to get people through. Good Call.”

  With that I stepped back out into the very hospital like hallway. The smell of ammonia and other cleaning agents wasn’t as strong as I thought it would be. We carefully worked our way up to the third floor. The stairwell was very much like any other concrete stairwell I had ever been in, except for the trails of blood. Well, that and the smell. I could tell I was smelling blood and any other matter that happened to ooze its way out of a wound. Investing in nose plugs would be in my future. I guess I needed to add it to the list.

  It was a short trip up the bloody stairwell, but we made it to the third floor. We were greeted by a repeat of the second floor. We did the same circuit of the third as we had done before. Almost all these beds were filled with patients. I went into each room to check the monitors on each person. It looked like every single one was breathing. Monitors were beeping. This is not what I was told we would find up here. Clearly there is a discrepancy. I just didn’t know what the story was. If it is limited to 70 dead, and many of those were from the attacks, then the supposed sacrifice was blown way out of proportion. I needed facts, and I wanted to make damn sure that these people were not dead.

  We finished the third floor quickly and proceeded to the fourth. There was one fundamental difference this time: destruction. Two of the rooms to our right looked to have their doors missing, or at least a few pieces of them on the ground. This looks like some place that I really didn’t want to be. In the back of my mind this entire time thoughts of my twin and her last moments kept slowly bubbling up to the surface. I kept burying them, but the sight of all the hospital beds, first the filled ones and then all the empty ones, was not a happy trip down memory lane. I realized that today I had spent more time in a hospital than I had in most of the previous 9 years combined. I really didn’t want to see any dead children in hospital beds, that would change the tone for the worse.

  Halfway through the floor, and many occupied rooms later, we rounded the opposite end of the floor. I saw a young light skinned man in medical scrubs and carrying a clipboard. He saw me and all the soldiers behind me with guns, and immediately put his hands up in the air. “I surrender,” were the first words out of his mouth.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Tim, we were hoping you could explain to us all that you have done here in regard to patient welfare. I’ve got some conflicting information that I would really like to sort out.” I offered him the smallest of smiles in hopes of keeping him calm. I calmly motioned for him to follow me, and then I stepped forward confident that the layout was the same on this floor as the previous two. Fortunately for me, the layout was similar and I ended up stepping into a centralized nurses station.

  The next thing was Assess.

  Human, Gifted Healer, Level 4

  He couldn’t kill 200 people and still only be level 4. Yeah, it was time to hear his story. “Tim, why don’t you tell me about what’s been going on here since Saturday?”

  “Gee. A lot. A lot has been going on.” Tim replied, and in so doing, his youth and nervousness rang through. This guy was probably younger than I was. He looked sturdy, and his eyes had a haunted look in them. But his words resonated like someone who was more child than man.

  “Why don’t you start from Saturday, and tell me the whole story?”

  “Well, Saturday morning, we got the system. I got this really cool class call gifted healer. The system was great for doing that for me. I really like the class. Anyhow, I used my ability on a bunch of people in comas. All 8 of them woke up, and their other health problems magically went away. I think this is because I have 2 class abilities. It says one of them is passive, so it happens every time I use a healing ability. Anyhow, everyone else got decent healing abilities too, so we're curing folks and not just lessening the pain and symptoms. I felt great that I could heal people. But then the wolf demons came. They would climb up the outside walls to get in any open windows. We lost several caretakers. We also lost a couple dozen patients. Not all of them immediately, but eventually from fatal wounds.”

  “And what about sacrificing patients for experience?” I asked to hopefully direct the discussion.

  “Well, I did say something to that effect, but I couldn’t go through with it. I did unplug those that were being sustained by life support. I knew whoever had to move those folks wasn’t going to be able to do so easily, and probably not the distance it would take to get them to another facility in a safe zone. This was me doing a kindness. These people were being sustained, and one decent electrical outage might very well kill them off. If we had the ability to save them or could learn those kinds of abilities, then it would be different. I don’t even know how you learn new abilities.”

  “Were there any others that you euthanized?”

  “Yes. None of us could heal cancer; my cure natural diseases ability doesn’t cure it. I am awfully saddened by that. How can cancer not be considered a disease? To be safe, I got video and written signatures by those patients who would rather have me help them end it than die due to the apocalypse.”

  “Okay, so why do you have so many people under sedation?” The answers seemed to make sense so far. I was waiting for the twist, if there was one.

  “After I cured them, I realized I couldn’t exactly make enough meals for an extra 8 people every day. I was also going to add 8 people each day to that total, and pretty soon that number would be too much to sustain. Those people consented to going back to sleep for a little while when I told them that it wasn’t safe to have them constantly awake until we could transport them out of the facility to a safe zone.”

  Fuck. He makes sense. He ended some lives, but those were people who either agreed to it, or we would be unable to move to a different setting. This was all purely his kindness. He was not the monster I thought he was. “So why did your coworkers suggest that you were going to kill over 200 residents?”

  “Probably because that meant they wouldn’t have to deal with the full aftermath of the fights. There were an awful lot of dead bodies that I had to either drag up to the roof or drag down to the ground floor and outside. I refused to bury people because I figured dead bodies could be affected by some sort of foul magician or something. Magic is real now.”

  This man got it. He understood that necromancers would be a problem in our new world. I really do not want to punish him. He was doing smart things in this situation. Depressing, and some very sad things, but necessary ones. “Tim. You’re a good young man. I know that people would want me to punish you for what you did, but I’m going to assign you to the Hospital in Fenton. All these comatose people will be transported there. Your job is to heal and awaken them. We will have someone bring you a few other healing abilities as they become available. You will add those to your repertoire.”

  Tim blinked a few times, but then just nodded. “I understand. I’ll happily go and stay at the hospital until everyone here in a coma or affected by disease is awake and able to help out.” He didn’t seem upset. He was, at the very least, accepting of my brief decision. I wasn’t sure if I had absolute authority to decide that, but someone has to decide something.

  With that decided, Clint made his way to the roof. I followed out of curiosity. I had never actually seen him use his class ability. The first thing that assaulted me once I reached the rooftop was the smell. I was not prepared for the smell of burnt bodies. The copper smell of blood I was already used to in the stairwell. But burnt human flesh smelled far too much like some sadistic twist on BBQ. I immediately retched over the side of the building. I couldn’t get to the railing fast enough. I left a trail of vomit for several feet until the last bits did indeed make it over the railing.

  The bodies were burning down to ashes, so visually it was dark and visceral despite the hot sunny day. The heat simply made the smell worse. I tried to find a spot that was far from fires and the smell of burning flesh and guts. As soon as I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit, I concentrated on Clint. He stood at the base of the tower with his gloved hand, metal rising into the sky. The whole tower started to glow green and then soft blue. The whole process consumed several minutes, and I was left mesmerized by the beauty of it all.

  After that was done, I beat a hasty retreat to the ground floor while everyone else was still sorting through moving comatose patients to the hospital. I had no desire to get mired in the particulars of transporting over 200 patients to the hospital. I waited for several buses and ambulances to arrive to transport people. To make it work, four guys from one of the Oakland squads were ripping out several rows of seats to make room for cots. This looked like it was going to be an all day thing for several squads to get these people transported.

  The important thing was that with this done, Oakland, Missouri, would now be empty of residents.

  One down, two to go. And those had already been going for a while.